Why Java is still relevant

by eranation • 13 years ago

47 78 13 years ago

eranation9• 13 years ago

This is one of my first posts, and English is not my native language, so comments not just on the content but also on the language are more than welcome.

danso• 13 years ago

Speaking for myself in the U.S., the need to learn a new language other than English has become such an edge case that I always marvel when non-native English speakers put their work out for us to judge. Your writing is clear...more importantly, you have a great grasp of how to visually partition your essay, a skill that many writers, native English or not, could improve on. Great submission, even if I'd like Java to be less prominent :)

eranation9• 13 years ago

Thanks! :-)

dwyer• 13 years ago

In that case, "Why it saves you time?" should be "How does it save you time?" That was the only line in the piece that screamed "non-native English speaker" to me.

eranation9• 13 years ago

Much appreciated, thanks!

cpeterso2• 13 years ago

I was impressed by your clear writing. Some minor suggestions since you asked for feedback: <:)

* "mandatory requirement" is redundant. If something's not mandatory, then it's not a requirement! :)

* "Many admit that as much as Java is not much fun to write code with, the JVM is a different story.": This sentence is awkward. Perhaps something like: "Many admit Java code is not much fun to write, but the JVM doesn't limit your choice of language."

* "Scala shares the Java Technology Stack, and knowing Java is a big plus when learning Scala, especially due to the common library ecosystem, and the insights into the JVM workings.": This sentence is awkward. It could be simplified into something like: "Knowing Java is a big plus when learning Scala because the languages share a common library ecosystem."

If you are interested in more resources about English writing, I recommend Joseph M. Williams' Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Strunk & White's Elements of Style is a classic (and short), but some people dislike it.

eranation9• 13 years ago

Great feedback, I will certainly look up these books, thanks!

suyash• 13 years ago

Java runs the world and runs on several devices from Raspberry Pi, embedded robots (java me) to Mobile Devices (Android) to Enterprise Software (Java EE) to Data Servers crunching Big Data (Hadoop).

syberslidder• 13 years ago

Java is still relevant because of how much code is written in Java.

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

Just like Cobol?

As expected, the article was that, a "Java is fast" that can only be said if you don't compare it with anything made to be fast, and "Android uses Java". All the other reasons are excuses for drawbacks of the language.

The one thing that made Java relevant - that one can create a ruleset that constrain bad coders and avoid them destroying all your codebase - didn't go away. And the context where companies just don't know how to hire developers didn't change either, thus still only projects that protect themselves against bad developers are ever successful within them. But it seems that the more productive languages are so much more advanced than Java nowadays that it become better to protect a project by hiring less developers than by making them less powerfull... Or, at least, I can think of no other reason for people to care to anounce that Java is not dead yet.

bitwize• 13 years ago

Java will wane in relevance as Oracle turns it into a way to squeeze support contracts out of users (see the recent timezone-update kerfuffle).

calpaterson• 13 years ago

Actually, Oracle have proved a LOT more committed than Sun to improving the language. They put one of the smartest guys in charge of Java 8, charged him with turning the ship around and have given him a lot of resources to work on it. Even Java 7, while including few language features, did include a lot of JVM improvements.

The timezone-update tool, on the other hand, really is a minor issue. So some people will have to use IBM's tool instead. Yeah, it's lame, but I don't think it's going to change anyone's mind.

parasubvert• 13 years ago

Did you not notice that Oracle is still providing free TZ updates through regular JRE updates?

TZ updates aren't going to have much of an impact on Java relevance. If they start charging for JRE updates themselves, let's talk.

vinceguidry3• 13 years ago

Why learn Java? Sure, there's lots of jobs out there for it, but there's also lots of Rails jobs too. Rails is more fun than Java, so if you're looking to expand your career opportunities, you're probably better off learning a tech stack that won't bore you to death.

cromwellian2• 13 years ago

Things are boring when you already know them. Things are interesting when you're learning something new. Most of the excitement over other languages comes down to the fact that you are starting from scratch and everything is fresh.

gohrt• 13 years ago

As someone who coded both Java and Javascript today, I attest that boring is also when every little darn thing takes 10x the amount of time and code as it rightfully ought to.

boneheadmed• 13 years ago

This is very true. It's why I seem to keep looking at Clojure articles and tutorials lately. I keep saying I should master language "X" then I jump to something new...Thankfully I'm just a hobbyist.

eranation9• 13 years ago

My point was that if you know ruby, and think about adding something to your arsenal, don't write off java automatically. I meant it's still relevant for hackers to learn it, even though many of us agree writing in ruby is more enjoyable.

coldtea• 13 years ago

Why learn Java? Sure, there's lots of jobs out there for it, but there's also lots of Rails jobs too.

Far far less than Java jobs.

Rails is more fun than Java, so if you're looking to expand your career opportunities, you're probably better off learning a tech stack that won't bore you to death.

Rails and CRUD web apps bore most hackers to tears.

At least with Java you can work from web apps, to Android, to web services, create powerful servers like Cassandra or powerful stuff like Solr and Lucene, use embedded Java, and a lot more.

bluedino• 13 years ago

Far far less than Java jobs.

Especially in middle America, or corporate America.

vinceguidry3• 13 years ago

Far far less than Java jobs.

And far far far far less than .NET jobs. Which is still more fun than Java.

Rails and CRUD web apps bore most hackers to tears.

They don't bore me to tears. Between the brand new Javascript frameworks like Angular and CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, it's possible to develop great looking, simple apps that have a great deal of functionality in extremely short amounts of time.

polyfractal3• 13 years ago

Rails is not a language. Rails is not ruby. I wish people would stop conflating the two.

vinceguidry3• 13 years ago

That would be why I referred to it as a tech stack, not a language.

Wilya2• 13 years ago

But there's also lots of Rails jobs too.

Depends where you are. Outside Silicon Valley and a handful of tech hubs in the world, Rails pretty much doesn't exist. Java, on the other hand, is used everywhere.

nemothekid2• 13 years ago

Also a lot of the de-facto Big Data/NoSQL/Distributed Computing stack is Java(/Scala). Hadoop, HBase, Cassandra, Neo4j, Storm, its actually pretty interesting to note that most of the popular nosql solutions are in Java. On top of that its the number 3 language on Github.

I'm not a huge fan of Java but I'd be pretty surprised if someone was saying Java wasn't relevant. Don't quote me on this, but its also the fastest language you are going to get without pulling out C/C++. When the author made the claim that Java was as fast as Go, I was a bit surprised. I wasn't aware Go had caught up to Java.

octo_t2• 13 years ago

JVM crypto (i.e. using encryption libraries) can be faster than native because of function inlining (whereas in C/C++ you don't inline across libraries at link time because an update to the crypto library would require a recompile).

jimmaswell4• 13 years ago

Java and Mono have been shown to be roughly comparable overall in speed, each a bit worse or better than the other in some ways, I've read.

headius• 13 years ago

Shown where? Mono's JIT is nowhere near as good as OpenJDK/Hotspot.

sjg007• 13 years ago

It's also because of automatic garbage collection and the fact that programmers today can't handle memory management.

octo_t2• 13 years ago

Programmers in the past couldn't handle memory management either.

nu2ycombinator• 13 years ago

Programmers today do not have to handle memory management because of JVM. Programmers yesterday could not handle memory management that's why jvm came into existence.

asperous• 13 years ago

It's because of automatic compilation and the fact that programmers today can't handle register management.

It's because of integrated circuits and the fact that programmers today can't handle voltage management.

elithrar• 13 years ago

When the author made the claim that Java was as fast as Go, I was a bit surprised. I wasn't aware Go had caught up to Java.

As a Go "fan": it hasn't. It's close in some things, faster in a few, but the JVM has years (and years) of performance tuning in it, and Go won't unequivocally beat Java for some time (if ever).

(This WiFi connection is failing me right now, but there's a good number of Go vs. Java benchmarks out there, for whatever benchmarks are worth)

eranation9• 13 years ago

I was only referring to the Web framework benchmark, where Go (1.1 I think) is taking the lead over Servlets on many of the benchmarks. Still impressive.

nemothekid2• 13 years ago

That was my reaction as well. We are using Go in production here and I'm very much a Go fan, but I'd be surprised if Go caught up to Java in so little time.

rieter• 13 years ago

There is no reason why Go can't quickly catch up with Java. It's memory model is better suited to optimization vs. JVM.

BadassFractal2• 13 years ago

Java and the JVM seem like fantastic foundations to have for a language like Clojure. You can develop in a fun language and still use the immense amount of libraries that have been created over the years by the community. You can interop with pretty much anything, and you didn't have to make it yourself or wait for your language to catch up to it, because it's been there all along thanks to Java.

Don't look at Java like the starting point, look at it as the big furnace for what's leveraging it.

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

I have always found it rather unfortunate that the JVM is the best platform for Clojure, and unfortunate that interop with Java is so important. All of the blemishes on the language seem to be a consequence of those two things.

BadassFractal2• 13 years ago

I think the idea is to have Clojure support as many runtimes as possible, or whichever runtime is best for the task. The JVM was the start and at this point has the biggest momentum, but there's not much stopping people from porting the language to a different runtime.

quchen• 13 years ago

Every time articles about a language "still being relevant" pop up, my first thought is "oh, it's down to that stage already". Not sure what this article is trying to accomplish.

polyfractal3• 13 years ago

Lucene (and projects built on Lucene like Elasticsearch and Solr) make Java relevant, even ignoring everything else built in Java.

jebblue4• 13 years ago

I like Java, really. Learning it might be a good idea as the article suggests, you might find you like it too. It's solid, fast, tons of libraries, it's efficient for programming IMO.

jebblue4• 13 years ago

> Stream.of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) .map(x -> x * x).filter(x -> x % 2 == 0) .reduce(0, (sum, x) -> sum + x);

If I catch anyone writing Java code that I will have to work on writing Lambda expression crap like the above I will hit the ceiling. How can you debug junk like that?

jimmaswell4• 13 years ago

I write code like that with LINQ and such in .NET all the time and have no problem debugging it.

UberMouse• 13 years ago

Is there actually a way to properly debug LINQ expressions? I haven't figured out how to get Visual Studio to step through lambdas or break halfway through the chain (eg break after the filter call has completed and before reduce runs in the above example).

But I'm not sure if I'm missing some blindingly obvious.

Wilya2• 13 years ago

I find that perfectly readable. I would be more likely to catch an error in that line than in the equivalent in imperative style. It's a matter of habit. It all depends on what you are used to write, whether you are used to functional style or not.

zaphar2• 13 years ago

This exact response right here is why a perfectly good language like java is ranked just under php in the hated languages list.

The language is fine but the insistence by the vast majority of the developers using it to do things in a way that can only be described as "Enterprisey" gives it a bad name. And it really is a shame.

codygman2• 13 years ago

How can you not debug "junk" like that?

jebblue4• 13 years ago

I can see my view is already unpopular but you asked a fair question. It's several key pieces of logic jammed together on one line. That's not the part that bugs me though, it's wondering how this is going to play out. I can imagine multiple threads servicing the Lambda stuff and it reminds me of trying to debug Camel code hopping around debug screens trying to stay up with all the async stuff going on just to find a simple bug. Maybe ... maybe I'm wrong ... I could be, I don't think I am but it's going to have to be more deterministic than what I'm afraid it will turn out to be.

matdrewin• 13 years ago

Amen.

I'm a bit tired of people just dismissing Java based on its hipness factor.

marssaxman• 13 years ago

I dismissed Java a lot more back when it was hip. Now that it is not hip, it is no longer necessary to dismiss Java, since I can simply ignore it.

zaphar2• 13 years ago

I like java as a language. It's consistent, has less warts than many languages and the jvm is pretty darn awesome.

What I don't like is the java ecosystem. Guice? I've nothing but bad experiences with it. Just about every framework out there that I've used in java has gotten in my way more frequently than it's been helpful. Java Api's (excluding much of the stdlib) almost all seem to be made to annoy me.

Java's great. If only it's ecosystem matched.

twic3• 13 years ago

I work on a large application that uses Guice, and it doesn't seem so bad, so YMMV.

Mind you, this may just be because there are other things in the application that are so much worse.

bliker• 13 years ago

I would be curious what PG thinks about this. Relating in opinions described in his book. And is it just me or "banking startup" sounds like oxymoron.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinion. Still think learning GO could be a better idea, at least for me.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

A great irony about the use of Java as a language for interactive systems is that it only took off when deeply enmeshing a Java-ish runtime with Android freed Java from the constraints of "write once run anywhere."

It turns out that OSs have diverse interactive frameworks with different capabilities, and OSs compete on the basis of those differences. In Android, this divergence from other OSs includes the ability to install aftermarket middleware in Android's userland.

depsypher• 13 years ago

I've given up any hope of Java ever being considered a sexy language. Its philosophy has been the polar opposite of 'move fast and break things' at least in terms of how the language has evolved. That's been mostly a good thing, though frustrating. The language features are catching up now with the 'sexy' languages and it's pretty exciting.

Still one of the biggest problems with Java I think is the plethora of options you have when building a web stack. And integrating everything is a huge pain. There are options like dropwizard or play, but those bake in too much of their own assumptions for my taste. If anyone is interested in seeing what a modern Java web stack looks like, check out my attempt at it here: https://github.com/depsypher/flapjack

taylodl• 13 years ago

Java is the new COBOL. Everyone is going to be wondering when Java will die for the next thirty years. Java will still be running the enterprise decades after RoR is gone.

The more interesting question is which will die first: Java or COBOL?

GnwbZHiU• 13 years ago

Of course, who says it is not? Java sucks allright, but is still a big player in the industry.

Why Java is still relevant

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